


Hello Mountain, My Old Friend

by Scrawlers



Series: To Devour the Sun [4]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 09:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8484697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: Gladion is once again accosted by Alan and his charizard. This time Alan wants information, but if there is one thing in the world Gladion doesn't want to talk about, it's the Aether Foundation.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm rating this for general audiences because there isn't anything particularly gruesome or violent here, but Gladion does have a filthy mouth and uses strong language, so if that sort of thing bothers you please be aware of it going in.

The ground fell away, sharp and sudden, from beneath Gladion’s feet as he made his way back toward the city after training with Null in their private cove.

The shift was so sudden that, for a second, his brain failed to process what happened. For a blinding second he wildly thought that perhaps the ground had suddenly broken from beneath his feet, or that the world had flipped on its axis and dumped him into the sky. But as he kicked frantically at the disappearing earth beneath him and tried to reclaim his stomach from where it had bottomed out, he registered that something was squeezing his shoulders so tightly that it was a little painful—that claws were digging through the fabric of his sweatshirt to secure him despite his flailing. His heart was still thrashing against his ribs, but as the realization that he had been lifted into the air finally clicked in his head, he stopped struggling to get free and twisted around to try and see what had hold of him. It was difficult, given the way he was being held, but when he craned his neck to look up and over his shoulder he was met with the sight of bright orange scales, and the by-now familiar black hair and blue eyes of the bastard as he leaned around the side of his charizard’s neck.

“If you don’t flail it makes for a more comfortable ride,” Alan said. In true bastard fashion, he was smirking faintly.

Rage hit Gladion like a furious pulse, momentarily blinding and deafening him to everything else. He felt his breathing shallow out, and his head throbbed as his muscles quaked in response to his temper, vibrating beneath his skin. He took a deep breath (as much as he could manage) in a Herculean effort to get his temper (and keep his form) under control. He couldn’t afford to lose either now, however much the bastard might deserve the fallout. It took a few seconds longer than he would have liked, but when his surge of temper subsided and his body calmed to just a light tremor, he snapped, “Put me _down_ , bastard!”

The smirk fell from Alan’s face, but any smugness Gladion might have felt was tempered by the way Alan merely raised his eyebrows before his eyes darted to the ground. The glance was only a second long, but it was enough; Gladion followed his cue and looked down, and his throat constricted as he saw that they were far closer to the clouds now than they were to the ground. The trees were a smear of green across the landscape below them, and the roofs of the buildings of the city were barely distinguishable. It was impossible to make out any people or pokémon at all.

“Okay,” Alan said, and Gladion whipped back around in time to see Alan shrug as he sat up straight. “You heard him, Lizardon. Drop him.”

Gladion opened his mouth to tell Alan to wait—to tell him to _stop_ , to tell him _don’t_ —but all he had time for was an intelligible squeak before his charizard made a little sound of assent and released him. Gladion’s voice was lost to a breathless scream as he plummeted from the sky, the wind sharp against his ears and the upward gust swallowing both his voice and the air from his lungs. In a panicked attempt to right himself in the air (as if that would do him any good once he smashed against the ground below) he flailed both his arms and his legs in an attempt to control his descent. It was no good; he tumbled shoes over head in the air, rushing toward the ground, wind or pressure or something else causing his eyes to sting and his vision to blur—

With as little warning as either of the two prior times Alan’s charizard snatched Gladion up, this time securing his ankles from the midst of his wild tumble before tossing him up overhead. Gladion was righted in the air, but before he had time to react to this the bastard’s charizard shot up parallel to him, and grabbed him in a bear hug that pinned his arms to his sides. Held chest-to-chest against the charizard as he was, Gladion could hardly move, though he still craned his neck back so that none of his skin touched the charizard’s scales, just in case. The last thing he wanted was to lose control of his form fuck-hundred feet in the air.

When the bastard’s charizard had finally resumed flying horizontally through the air, the bastard himself leaned forward again, looking down around the side of his charizard’s neck like he had before. Once again, a maddening smirk was playing on his lips as he said, “Want to go again?”

As bad as it would be if he came in skin-to-scales contact with the beast holding him, Gladion instinctively squeezed himself closer to the charizard as he felt more violent tremors (from _rage_ , they were from _rage_ , rage and fury and anger and _hate_ and _not fear_ ) wrack his body. The charizard made a curious sound and looked down at him, but Gladion ignored it.

“What the hell is this for?” he said instead, and he put as much hate as he could muster into the glare he sent the bastard’s way to counter the way his voice shook. “What the fuck did I do to deserve this this time? I haven’t seen you or the chick all day!”

Once again the bastard’s smirk faded, but once again he didn’t look the least bit intimidated either. Instead, he rolled his eyes as he sat back more comfortably on his charizard.

“Relax,” he said. “I just want to ask you a few questions. You have information I need.”

“Information about what?” Gladion demanded, and the rapid beating of his heart suddenly had little to do with the ridiculous altitude the bastard’s charizard was holding him at. “About Null? Because if you want to know about him, then you can kiss my—”

“Not about your pokémon, no,” Alan said.

“Then what? Team Skull? ‘Cause what we do is none of your damn business, so if you think—!”

“It isn’t about Team Skull, either. Not directly, anyway. Lizardon.”

There was something about the way Alan said his charizard’s name that sounded more like a _directive_ than a way to get his charizard’s attention. It was stupid to think that, Gladion knew, whatever the tone the bastard had used was—but even as he thought about how ridiculous it was to think that Alan could use his pokémon’s name to give it an order, his charizard rumbled in response and altered its flight path. However unspoken the order was to Gladion’s ears, the charizard seemed to understand. Gladion could only watch, his mouth agape, as the charizard wheeled around in the sky and carried them toward the primary mountain on the island. The second he laid eyes on it, Gladion felt dread settle like a brick in his chest.

Mountains were the goddamn worst. For one thing, there were too many of them; Gladion didn’t know how many there were in the world at large and to be honest it tweaked him out if he thought too much on it, but there was one mountain per island in Alola and that was four mountains too many. The only thing they had going for them was privacy; due to the disgusting altitude most of them reached, it was rare for Alolan natives to travel up the rocky paths, and rarer still for annoying-ass tourists to attempt to make the climb. But whatever privacy mountains rewarded their travelers with, that still wasn’t enough for Gladion to tolerate them. Mountains were tall. Mountains were, by and large, comprised of rocky paths that wound through and around them, and that had suffered so many assaults from the wind, sun, and rain over the years that they were as sturdy as a ninety-year-old geezer with a severe calcium deficiency. A mountain path, Gladion felt, could crumble from beneath your feet and drop you to your death at any given second, and probably would just for the fun of it, because even if most people claimed that mountains didn’t possess sentience and therefore couldn’t be evil, Gladion wasn’t so sure that was the case. You could die from falling off a mountain at any point, he knew, and the worst part was that it was entirely possible no one would even know for weeks (if not months, if not years, if not _ever_ ) depending on where you landed when you fell. Guzma and Plumeria might not ever find out if he died from falling off a mountain. Null would starve to death in his pokéball because Gladion wouldn’t be alive to feed him and it would be all the mountain’s fault.

Mountains were the worst, no doubt about it, and yet here he was, being carried to the top of a damn mountain _yet again_ by the same goddamn charizard. Gladion had no room to wiggle free (and would just fall to his death even faster if he tried), and so he tried to swallow against the dread he felt as the charizard carried them over the mountain paths. This particular mountain had one main path that wound up all the way around it in an ascending spiral, and then numerous plateaus peppered throughout as if to give off the impression that it was a perfectly natural place to hang out and spend time. In an even more blatant attempt to trick the unwary into thinking it was safe, some of the plateaus had little trees growing in them—weak little imitations of life to make them seem more pleasant. Gladion wasn’t fooled. Those trees were nothing more than a cheap disguise. The mountain itself was nothing more than a midnight lycanroc in mareep’s clothing.

But even if he, as an Alolan native, knew that the mountain was evil and should be avoided at all costs, the bastard was a goddamn tourist who was too ignorant to know any better. The charizard circled the top of the mountain before it finally reached a plateau nearest the peak (because of course it did, of course it had to pick one of the _absolute worst_ ones it could find), and released Gladion above it without warning. Gladion hit the ground on his feet, but the momentum of the charizard’s flight caused him to stumble and forced him to catch himself on his hands before he ate dirt. The rocky ground scraped his palms, and Gladion scowled as the charizard circled once through the air before it landed itself, the ground quaking a little under its weight (and Gladion’s heart seizing in his throat) before the bastard hopped off his dragon’s back.

“What have you brought me here for?” Gladion demanded, and he dusted his palms off on his pants as he stood up. The plateau the charizard had chosen was small; there wasn’t enough room for them to comfortably battle, but he jammed his hands into the pocket of his sweatshirt to palm Null’s pokéball anyway, just in case.

“I told you, I want information,” Alan said, and he studied Gladion for a second before he sighed. “That’s really all I want. You don’t have to be so defensive.”

“Don’t tell me what to be,” Gladion snapped, and in response Alan exchanged an exasperated look with his charizard. Gladion curled his hands into fists. “What do you wanna know, anyway? And who says I wanna tell you a damn thing?”

Alan crossed his arms, and fixed Gladion with a piercing stare.

“Two days ago our battle on the beach was interrupted when we were approached by employees from the Aether Foundation. The second you saw them, you panicked and took off running. I want to know why.”

Gladion felt lightheaded, and the thin air of the mountaintop had little to do with it. His hands shook as he squeezed Null’s pokéball in a vain attempt at comfort, and his palms were suddenly slick with the cold sweat that broke over his skin.

“Why do you wanna know?” he asked, and his voice cracked over the single word. Alan’s expression didn’t so much as twitch. “And didn’t they tell you? Didn’t you stick around to hear it from them if you wanted to know so badly? Bet they had plenty to say about me if you did, so what are you asking me for? And if you didn’t, then why not go ask them if you’re so interested? And what have you got to be interested in them for, anyway? You’re a damned tourist, so you’ve got no business—”

“Could you give me a chance to answer one question before you rattle off fifty more?” Alan asked dryly, and his charizard snorted. Gladion glared at it. “I did ask them why they were interested in you. One of their employees, a woman named Wicke, said that you’re a member of Team Skull, a criminal organization devoted to pokémon trafficking and other illegal activities. She seemed to think you’re dangerous.”

Wicke’s name alone was enough to make Gladion feel queasy, the same way he did every time he was offered candy corn around Halloween. None of the humans working for the Aether Foundation were worth much as far as he was concerned, but at least those who solely worked on the sanctuary side of it could be excused due to their ignorance. Wicke had no excuse. She knew everything—knew it _all_ —and happily helped out anyway. Worse still, she had the gall to act as if she was _sweet_ , as if she was _loving_ , as if she was _nurturing_ and _warm_. She had the nerve to pretend like she gave a damn about people and pokémon alike—as if she gave a damn about Gladion or Lillie—when he damn well knew better given the way she kissed up to his mother. That she was now trash-talking him to the bastard wasn’t too much of a surprise, but the fact that he felt a little hurt over it was.

“Bet she did,” he spat at length. “Bet she had a whole lot to say about me and Skull, and none of it good.” The bastard said nothing, his expression unflinching, and in the absence of something to shout against, Gladion said, “So what, you believe her, don’t you? You think we’re all good-for-nothings? It’s what everyone else sees us as. Just a bunch of worthless street rats contaminating the streets, isn’t that right?”

“You do have something of a reputation.”

“So that’s it then, isn’t it? You brought me up here just to, what, confirm the fact that I’m trash? Just to make sure sweet ol’ Aunt Wicke was telling you the truth?” He spread his arms wide. “Here you go, then. Consider it con-fucking-firmed. What are you gonna do about it though, huh? Gonna try and do the world a favor and push the big, bad, dangerous Team Skull enforcer off the side of the goddamn mountain?” Gladion raised his chin, trying his best to make up for the difference in height behind them. “Give it your best shot, bastard, but don’t think for a fucking second I’m gonna make it easy for you.”

“Don’t worry. I’m well aware that you would never make anything easy for anyone, least of all me,” Alan said, and as much as that was true and something Gladion would normally take pride in, there was something in the way Alan said it that set Gladion’s teeth on edge. “But no, I’m not. Like I said, I want information about the Aether Foundation. Tell me everything you know.”

“ _Why_?” Gladion said, and before Alan could reply, added, “You talked to them, didn’t you? So didn’t they give you their whole spiel already? All that garbage they spew about saving pokémon and enlightening the world and all that other bullshit?”

“Yeah, they did. But I want to hear about them from another source.” Alan leaned back against his charizard, whose only response was to shift a little so that Alan could lean back against its chest, its arm draped casually around his shoulders. “You looked terrified of them, and you don’t scare easily. At least, you don’t when both of your feet are on the ground.”

Heat surged into Gladion’s cheeks, but the shame he felt at having his weakness so casually thrown in his face was quickly overtaken by a renewed sense of fury as a deep laugh rumbled in the charizard’s chest. Gladion slowly squeezed his shaking fingers into fists in front of him as his cheeks burned, unsure of what he wanted to do more: wring the bastard’s neck, or pummel his face in. “Y-You—!”

“So I want to know what it is about them that makes you so afraid,” Alan said, unfazed. “I don’t buy that you’re dangerous—at least, not that you’re dangerous enough for them to know you as personally as they seem to. Whatever history they have with Team Skull, it doesn’t make sense that they would be on a first-name basis with all of its members. For them to know you as personally as they do, your history with them has to run deeper than that. You know something about them others don’t, and I want to know what it is.”

“It’s none of your damn business, is what it is,” Gladion said. Alan heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes up to exchange another look with his charizard, and as the two of them looked at each other, Gladion felt like he realized something.

For a second, he wasn’t entirely sure of what it was he had realized. It had been years since she had told them, after all—a little over two now, and two years away had done a lot to aid him in repressing that night to the deepest recesses of his memory. But he could remember it now as he looked at the bastard and his charizard. He could remember how his mother had sat him and Lillie down to talk about the various experiments she and others at Aether Paradise had been carrying out—about their successes and failures, and more importantly the purpose behind them. He could remember the graphs and data that his mother had pulled up on the holographic monitor—could remember her telling them about different worlds (and about _their_ world, she said, as if this one wasn’t), and Gates, and energy. Could remember her talking about different forms of energy, different _types_ , and one type that was purer than any other, one type that was just what she needed to bring her plans to fruition, and that . . . that energy was . . .

“Hey, bastard,” Gladion said, though he felt strange as he said it, as if someone else was speaking instead of him. “How close are you to that charizard?”

Alan blinked, and for the first time Gladion could remember his expression was one of blank shock unmarred by exasperation or amusement. He glanced over at his charizard, who turned at the same time to meet his eyes; after their shared look of bewilderment, Alan looked back at Gladion.

“Very,” he said, and there wasn’t an ounce of humor or teasing in his voice. “We’ve been together every day for the past six years—well, over six years now—”

“That’s not what I’m asking,” Gladion said, and Alan closed his mouth, his lips a thin line as both he and his charizard stared Gladion down. “What I’m asking is how strong your bond with it is. How much do you trust that thing?”

“Lizardon’s not a _thing_ , he’s a _he_ ,” Alan snapped. This, too, was the first time Gladion could think of that he had managed to get under the bastard’s skin, and the worst part about it was that—the circumstances being what they were—he couldn’t take the time to enjoy it.

“Yeah, okay, fine, whatever. Just answer the damn question, bastard. How much do you trust it— _him_?”

In lieu of answering immediately, Alan looked over at his charizard again—and that was all the answer Gladion needed. Despite how irate Alan had looked at Gladion’s dismissive treatment of his charizard, his expression softened the second his and his charizard’s eyes met, a smile tilting his lips and easily reaching his eyes to warm them. His charizard smiled in his own way as well, his lips pulled up over his pointed teeth. With a sense of ease that made the action look as natural as breathing, Alan lifted his hand to stroke his charizard’s snout.

“With my life and then some. There’s no one I trust more,” Alan said, as if it was even necessary for him to give a verbal answer anymore. His charizard crooned and nuzzled his head against Alan’s palm. Alan’s smile grew, and Gladion felt like there was an invisible fist in his chest grinding his lungs into dust. Alan looked back at Gladion in time with his charizard, and raised his eyebrows. “Why?”

Gladion felt sick. He swallowed to try and quell the nausea, but that only made it worse, and the tremors now rocking his body—tremors that he couldn’t be sure of the source of, not anymore—didn’t help either. He shoved his hands into the pocket of his sweatshirt again in an effort to hide how badly they were trembling.

There was no doubt about it. This—Alan and his charizard, and the bond they shared—was exactly what Gladion’s mother needed. They were a perfect match, he was sure of it. And if she got a hold of them—it wasn’t just them, he knew. He didn’t know the exact number, but he knew she needed more than just the one pair. But they were a start, and even putting that aside . . . he didn’t know all the details, _couldn’t_ know all the details, hadn’t stayed around long enough to _learn_ all the details, but if she got them . . . if they walked right into her hands like it seemed the bastard was intent on doing, then they . . .

“Stay away from the Aether Foundation,” Gladion said finally, and with how badly he was shaking he couldn’t keep his voice steady. Alan exchanged another bewildered look with his charizard. “Stay as far the fuck away from them as you can, you hear me? In fact, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get the hell out of Alola altogether. Get as far away as you can. I don’t give a fuck where you go, but if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get as far away from here—and _them_ —as possible.”

Because no matter how much Gladion hated the bastard, that didn’t mean he wanted him _dead_.

“Why?” Alan asked. He took a step closer, and Gladion took a step back in response. “What’s wrong? You look like you’re about to fall apart.”

Gladion scowled. Okay, maybe he wanted the bastard a _little_ dead. But he still didn’t want him _that_ dead, and definitely not if it meant letting his mother win.

“I’m not gonna ‘fall apart,’ whatever the hell that means,” Gladion said, and he took another step back to put more distance between them. “I’m good, but you won’t be if you go near Aether. Don’t get involved with them. Stay away.”

“ _Why_?” Alan repeated, impatience thick in his voice. “You’re not giving me any—”

“It doesn’t matter why,” Gladion said, and Alan exchanged another frustrated look with his charizard as the beast snorted. “You don’t need to know that. Just do as I goddamn say and don’t go near them.”

“Sorry, but I’m done taking orders from people who won’t give me the full story,” Alan said shortly. “You know something. Tell me what it is, Gladion.”

“Fuck you.”

“Gladi—hey!”

Gladion spun on the ball of his foot and took off down the mountain path, his stomach bottoming out as he stumbled and swayed precariously close to the edge. But he didn’t stop running; instead, as he heard the tell-tale sound of Alan recalling his charizard and footsteps on the rocky path behind him, Gladion charged down around the mountain path, emerged onto another flat plateau, quickly leaped behind a cluster of rocks and crouched behind them for cover. He sat, silent and still, and listened as Alan reached the plateau as well. All was quiet for a moment or two, and then—

“You know how obvious it is that you’re hiding behind that rock pile, don’t you?” Gladion grinded his teeth together to prevent himself from answering Alan’s dry, exasperated remark, and he heard Alan sigh. “Fine. I can’t force you to tell me. But in the future, know that warnings are usually more effective if the people receiving them know the meaning behind them.”

 _You don’t need to know the reason to know what the fuck ‘stay away’ means, you stupid bastard,_ Gladion wanted to say, and he pressed his mouth against his knees to stop himself from saying it out loud. _You don’t need to know about Ultra Beasts, or what my old lady wants, or what we are, or who I am—_

The sound of a pokéball opening rang clear through the little plateau, followed in short order by a small roar from Alan’s charizard. To Gladion’s ears, all charizard grunts and roars sounded the same, but it must have been a question to Alan’s ears for how he responded.

“No, we’ve got all we’re going to get from him. We’re done here.” Alan raised his voice a little louder as he addressed Gladion again. “Come find me if you ever want to battle again. Lizardon, let’s go.”

A powerful burst of wind accompanied the sound of powerful wing beats, and Gladion turned his eyes to the sky in time to see the bastard and his charizard soaring high above him, away from the mountain. Gladion watched him fly off before he cautiously stood up from his rocky hiding spot, and then allowed himself to slump against the nearest boulder, weak tremors still wracking his body.

In two years, he hadn’t done a single thing to stop his mother’s ambitions. He had joined Team Skull in the hopes that they would find a way to combat the Aether Foundation, but so far they hadn’t done a damn thing. It wasn’t surprising; he couldn’t tell Guzma or Plumeria his mother’s true intentions, and most of Team Skull was made up of a bunch of ragtag punks that the rest of society had deemed unfit to live with the normal, civilized people. Most of the time, Gladion thought this was just fine; he liked the ragtag punks of Team Skull, at least better than he liked most of the other jumped-up pricks of the world, if only because they had real integrity that others lacked most of the time. But while ragtag punks made for good company, they didn’t make for good heroes. They weren’t fit to fight the Aether Foundation. Even Plumeria didn’t really stand a chance against Gladion’s mother, and he wasn’t about to risk her safety by asking.

But his procrastination in finding a way to fight his mother had cost him. There was at least one candidate for sacrifice in Alola now—two, if the bastard and his charizard were counted as individuals rather than the set Gladion knew his mother would see them as. He didn’t know exactly how many she needed, but even one was too many in his eyes. Even one put them too close to her turning this dimension—his _home_ —into nothing more than a soulless, empty husk.

Gladion scraped his nails along the boulder as he finally calmed down enough to keep his form steady, and stood up.

With any luck, the bastard would take his advice and stay away from the Aether Foundation. With even more luck, he’d get the hell out of Alola altogether. In the meantime, Gladion would just have to do his part to at least distract the bastard enough so that he didn’t have _time_ to go near the Aether Foundation, even if he was too stupid to heed the warning. But before that . . .

Before that he still had to get back down to ground level, because once again the bastard had left him stranded on top of a goddamn mountain.

“The next time I see him,” Gladion said, “I’m kicking his ass.”


End file.
